And Franken Makes 60...

Al Franken was officially declared the winner of the November 2008 Minnesota Senate race on Tuesday by 312 votes, after that state's supreme court unanimously rejected Norm Coleman's lawsuit.

The win means that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will now have the votes of 60 people caucusing with the Democrats, although this includes two independents (Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont) as well as Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

Since it takes 60 votes to end debate and proceed to a majority vote in the 100-member Senate, many Democrats are celebrating Franken's win of the Minnesota seat after a long 8 months. However, the Democrats have had 59 votes since January and still they have not been able to pass truly progressive legislation.

It can't hurt the attempt to pass LGBT legislation, but I think the significance of the "60 vote barrier" has been overstated.

This Is Why I Am Confident Obama Will Win

This great graphic from DailyKos highlights the change in polling in favor of Barack Obama from September 19th through October 23rd in the eight Big Ten battleground states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota. Obama is now leading stronly (over 50%) in every single one of the battleground states, and several of them have early voting! By election day, an estimated one-third of all Americans will have voted already.

Do you really think McCain can make up the difference in all of these states in a dozen days? I don't.